Missing Aberdeen Archives reveal city's clash with King James I
Newly-discovered extracts from city records lost for more than 200 years have revealed fresh information about King James I's relationship with Scotland.
Newly-discovered extracts from city records lost for more than 200 years have revealed fresh information about King James I's relationship with Scotland.
The third volume from Aberdeen's council registers, which cover the period 1398-1511, had been missing for more than two centuries.
But Dr Jackson Armstrong, a history lecturer at Aberdeen University, noticed a reference to “very curious extracts from the records of the city of Aberdeen, 1398-1658” in a catalogue of the medieval holdings of ancient universities and colleges produced in 1932.
When he tracked down the manuscript, by James Man, he found a number of pages copied in the mid-1700s from the missing volume which covered the period 1414-1434.
The extracts have revealed how the city clashed with King James I when it refused to support a campaign against Highland chiefs.
Dr Armstrong said the discovery helped piece together a missing part of Scotland's heritage.
He said: “To find any trace of the missing burgh records after more than two centuries was unexpected but to find that these extracts offer us a new insight into Aberdeen's royal connections in this period is extraordinary.
“We have found information relating to King James I's journeys by sea to Aberdeen and Inverness.
“We can also see that in 1428, when the king arrested the Highland chiefs at Inverness, he demanded support of men and supply of provisions from Aberdeen. It does not appear that this was forthcoming as other sources show Aberdeen and three other towns were fined by the crown for failing to contribute fully.
“This new fragment shows that Aberdeen's officials received a direct complaint from James I about this incident and recorded it in the missing register.
“A year later a further letter from the King was recorded in a council memorandum which seems to relate to selecting burgesses to join the king's military campaign in 1429 against Alexander Lord of the Isles, suggesting the city was required to make further contributions to royal ambitions in the Highlands.”
Mr Man's “tortuous” handwriting was deciphered by Dr Edda Frankot, editorial research fellow on the Aberdeen burgh records research project and an expert in medieval and early modern script.
Dr Barry Robertson, of the Aberdeen City Archives, investigated Mr Man. He said: “It appears that James Man, a graduate of King's College, was collecting information with a view to writing a book entitled Memoirs of Scottish Affairs, from 1624 to 1651.
“He published a short section of this projected work along with an introduction in 1741. I doubt he realised at the time that his notes for a book which never came to full fruition would prove so valuable all these years later.”
The archive in Aberdeen's Town House is home to a collection of medieval records considered so significant that they have been recognised by Unesco.